COUNTER 5 usage statistics & SUSHI

The library module produces COUNTER 5 usage reports for your electronic resources and can serve them over SUSHI so consortia, funders, and your own analytics can harvest them automatically.

  • COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) is the international standard for consistent, comparable e-resource usage reporting.
  • SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) is the companion protocol a remote client uses to pull those reports without anyone exporting files by hand.

Usage dashboard

Admin → Library → COUNTER usage, or directly: /admin/library/counter

Shows the usage accrued in the catalogue, aggregated for reporting. Usage events are stored in library_usage_event and rolled up into the COUNTER report types below.

COUNTER 5 reports

The module generates the COUNTER 5 standard reports:

Report What it covers
TR_J1 Journal requests (excluding OA_Gold) — the headline "how much were our journals used" report
TR_J3 Journal usage by access type
PR Platform Report — usage across the whole platform
DR Database Report — usage per database/resource
IR Item Report — usage at the individual item level

Each report can be emitted as JSON (the COUNTER 5 JSON model) or TSV (the tabular export auditors and spreadsheets expect).

SUSHI harvesting

Admin → Library → SUSHI settings, or directly: /admin/library/sushi

This page configures the credentials a remote SUSHI client presents when harvesting your reports. A harvest request must carry the three standard SUSHI headers:

  • X-Requestor-Id
  • X-Customer-Id
  • X-API-Key — matched against the key set on this page (until a key is set, requests are allowed so you can complete first-time setup)

A missing header or a wrong key is rejected with the relevant COUNTER error (see below). Every harvest request is recorded in library_sushi_access_log for audit.

COUNTER/SUSHI error codes

The endpoint returns COUNTER-standard exception codes:

Code Meaning
1000 No usage available for the requested report/period
2000 Service busy / timeout
3000 Invalid or missing request syntax
4000 Invalid date range
5000 Report request limit exceeded
6000 Authentication failed (bad/missing API key)
9000 Internal error

Data

Table Purpose
library_usage_event Raw usage events that the COUNTER reports aggregate
library_counter_settings COUNTER/SUSHI configuration, including the SUSHI API key
library_sushi_access_log Audit log of every SUSHI harvest request
  • Library catalogue & OPAC — the activity that generates usage events.
  • KBART e-resource feeds — for the title-level holdings of the packages whose usage these reports count.

Excel (XLSX) export (v3.46.0)

COUNTER R5 reports can now be downloaded as XLSX in addition to JSON and TSV. On Admin → Library → COUNTER, pick a report (PR / TR_J1 / TR_J3 / DR / IR), choose the Excel format, and Download. The workbook carries a report-header block (Report_ID, institution, reporting period, created) followed by the data rows.